Nexstar 8SE - First night

[johninderby]

The 16mm would be a good medium power eyepiece for the 8SE.

I use one in my 8” Classical Cassegrain.

Edited April 21, 2020 by johninderby

[Beardy30]

Great  set up John ! 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Beardy30

[John]

The Nirvanas are very good value. If you wear glasses when observing their eye relief is a bit tight though, ie: you may not be able to see the full field of view. Eye relief is the distance that your eye needs to be positioned above the eye lens (the top lens in the eyepiece) to use the eyepiece fully effectively.

The 16mm and 7mm would be useful in your 8SE, the latter as a "highest power" eyepiece giving 286x.

I've owned a couple of the Celestron X-Cell LX's and thought them good but no better in terms of optical performance than the less expensive BST Starguiders. Both have more eye relief than the Nirvanas.

The Nirvanas give a wider field of view of course.

 

[Beardy30]

No I don’t wear specs 🤓 😂

[John]

15 minutes ago, Beardy30 said:

No I don’t wear specs 🤓😂

That can be helpful when choosing eyepieces - you have a wider choice at the medium and shorter focal length end.

 

 

[Dr Strange]

7 hours ago, Beardy30 said:

EP wise would you go for a 12mm or 18mm - the celestron x -Cel LX have been recommended to me 

Were it me, I wouldn't. I would go for the Explore Scientific 14mm 82 degree EP. But if you are wanting to stick with Celestron then the 12mm will serve you better. The 18mm is going to be too close to the 25mm Plossl you have now. 

[Beardy30]

Too expensive for me personally 

[johninderby]

And no better than the Nirvana either so would be a waste of money. The only advantage of the ES is that they have a bigger range of focal lengths.

Edited April 21, 2020 by johninderby

[John]

If only there were more focal length in the Nirvana range.

[Beardy30]

BTS stargliders look decent as well and affordable but I think I’ll go with the Celestron’s cheers  

[Peter_D]

OP, I have a 6SE and I was getting frustrated with it initially - just could not get any alignment to work. Did some research on here and other sites: bought a 12V power supply cable (I see you have the powertank, good choice) and a small mini pocket spirit level (shaped like a triangle).

First I level the tripod, second attach the mount and third attach the OTA to the mount (I have the OTA in a plastic crate outside up until this point so that it has reached ambient temp.)

Get a watch and make sure your time is spot on for when you need to input it.

Good that you know Polaris. Try and identify another bright star quite a bit away from Polaris - Regulus in Leo is very prominent now. I find Two Star Alignment works really well. I find that when centring the star, switching to a higher magnification eyepiece (from 25mm to say 10mm) really ensures the star is centred when I press align. Another method, if you just have lower mag eyepieces, is to defocus and use the large 'donut' of the defocused star image to better judge when the star is centred in the eyepiece.

Hope this helps.